With its bucolic New England charm, the Upper Valley is known for its natural beauty and outdoor activities. Lesser acknowledged is the area’s music scene, which boasts a small but passionate community — filling the area’s somewhat limited venues with their diverse sounds. The Upper Valley’s music scene may not be the flashiest, but it is filled with ever-growing talent and life. You just need to know where to look.
Katie McCabe ’21, a musician involved with a number of local bands, said the area lacks venues — making unconventional musical events, such as performances by beginner groups at The Main Street Museum and community Contra dances, all the more important. While McCabe said she has sometimes struggled to find other musicians, she believes the Upper Valley has nonetheless fostered a vibrant music community.
“There is a significant lack of venues in the Upper Valley, and I dream of potentially starting a venue and doing that whole thing,” McCabe said. “I think I have more musical soulmates in the area that I haven’t found yet. It’s just a little bit of a struggle to find them. But there is a strong sense of community because the people are hungry for it.”
With a dearth of venues, McCabe said the area’s music scene centers on unconventional spaces. She said she frequents the weekly Bluegrass jam at the Filling Station in White River Junction, “eclectic” performances at The Main Street Museum and Contra dances throughout the area. She said each venue has a unique vibe, connecting her with the music community in different ways.
“The Main Street Museum in White River Junction is our little-local-band-intro-weird scene where your band can get a gig even if you’re not good, which I think is really important to have,” McCabe said.
McCabe said she also enjoys connecting with the crowd through Contra dances, which foster a relationship between performers and frequent dancers.
“You swing people around, make eye contact with them for two minutes, and then you see them again a month later doing the same thing, and that’s your only relationship with them,” she said. “It’s a really fun, musical relationship to have — to play the fiddle and watch everyone connect in front of you.”
Local musician Eli Hecht ’23 also said Upper Valley residents and musicians should take advantage of spontaneous and unconventional events — whether it be a performance in a grocery store, a fundraiser or an outdoor concert — due to the lack of traditional performance spaces in the area. Hecht said outdoor venues are the most fruitful, but also noted that outdoor events are limited by the seasons.
“Scheduling is super seasonal,” Hecht said. “In the summer, early fall and late spring, there’s a lot going on. There’s all these outdoor events, but then winter comes and people go inside. There’s not a ton of venues here, but people do really still want to be listening to music.”
Hecht said he has “really enjoyed getting outside the campus music scene” after graduation. He explained that his departure from Dartmouth introduced him to a richer music community than he had initially experienced.
“Students hear a lot at Dartmouth that they ‘go to school in the middle of nowhere,’ and it’s pretty easy to believe that when most things that they do are on campus,” Hecht said. “It has been really nice to connect with different circles of musicians in the area, whether those are the bluegrass players or the jazz musicians. It’s made me feel a lot more connected to the area and community as a whole rather than the Dartmouth bubble.”
Christian Beck ’24, a solo artist and member of the student band The Stripers, has experienced both the on-campus and off-campus music scenes. He said he has played venues including Dartmouth Greek spaces, Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover and Anonymous Coffee House in Lebanon. He added that many of the Upper Valley’s smaller, more intimate performance spaces often yield similar listening atmospheres — with Sawtooth being an occasional exception.
“I would describe a lot of the venues as listening rooms,” Beck said. “ … Sometimes Sawtooth can get energized into an active dancing live show, depending on the music in the event. But I would say a majority of the venues around here have that coffeehouse, songwriter, open-mic kind of feel.”
Sawtooth owner Kieran Campion said he believes his venue has reinvigorated the local late-night music scene of the Upper Valley — which he said had previously been lacking.
“[The venue] came out of an idea that my father and I had been cooking up for 35 years or so, [after] noticing the dearth of late night, in particular, the dearth of entertainment, live music [and] nightlife opportunities in Hanover, despite the fact that it’s a college town,” he said. “There had never really been a place like this.”
Campion added that he intentionally makes space for both Dartmouth and local musicians on the Sawtooth stage, as part of his “central mission” to connect the two communities through music.
“We’ve brought in everything from college bands and small acoustic solo performers all the way up to eight- or 10-piece bands, some with national reputations,” Campion said. “I try to keep at least one night a week for somebody local, but I also try to reach out to other musicians. Ideally, I would love to both support the local music scene but also expose the local community to things that they can’t see elsewhere.”
Campion also said the diversity of genre and performance present in the local music sphere makes it all the more exciting.
“I’ve been pretty impressed with the diversity of music,” he said. “When I first started booking stuff, it felt very bluegrass heavy, and there is a certain element of that. But last week, we had a grunge rock band, and we’ve got three local punk bands coming in next week, so it’s been pretty diverse. There are certainly veins, genres that run through the music, but there’s a lot going on.”
With the continuing expansion and diversification of music in the Upper Valley, there remains a common goal: community. Both students and local musicians share their music at the area’s venues in order to connect with individuals who share their passion for music.
